


a pearl, at the bottom of the world

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Comfort, F/F, IN SPACE!, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7838776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe more trolls should remember that Feferi was the daughter of the Great Carbuncle, the Emissary to the Grand Court of Horrorterrors and <i>possibly</i> they could come to an understanding of the awe they should hold her in. In the most original sense. As an overwhelming feeling of <i>fear</i> produced by something so tremendously powerful, so worthy of reverence, that what it honestly inspired was dread. Terror. Shaking a troll down to the bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a pearl, at the bottom of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeurotropicAgentX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeurotropicAgentX/gifts).



> So I’m a sucker for xeno-physiology and would love to see sweet-natured Feferi going into a proper destructive, rampaging highblood rage because she’s at the top of the freaking hemospectrum and that’s just what happens.
> 
> Cue one of the female trolls (I’m partial to Terezi or Aradia, but will take any lady-troll) soothing her down from it. If you wanted to include an element of trepidation and danger because raging Feferi is terrifying, I would be delighted.

It's always been interesting to her, personally, how people get away from thinking about Feferi having anger issues, somehow deciding that her usual sweetness and light disposition is all there could possibly be. After all, she is the highest of the high, the coolest of the cold. And isn't it true enough that being a newly crowned Empress is a highly frustrating position to be in? Why wouldn't she have rage issues? Why shouldn't she get _frustrated?_ Counter-productive, counter-intuitive! It is a critical error to assume that just because Feferi Peixes is not Meenah Peixes, that Her Imperial Complacence is not Her Imperial Condescension, that ergo, their behaviours have no points of similarity. That one tyrian blood is _entirely_ unlike the other, especially as the rule of the Complace is meant to be as peaceful and as just as a certain be-skirted swimmer and cuttlefish cuddler turned raging tyrant can manage. It's a faulty judgement to base a course of action on and one of the reasons why Terezi is personally convinced Eridan failed so miserably at keeping his former moirallegiance with the Heiress healthy and led to its ultimate foundering.

The Empire shivers in its tracks when the Empress rages and it's a good thing for everytroll that the Empress's legal counsel is on the job. Soothing, balancing. Not always one of her most capable aspects of personal character but she does her best. It's more nerve wracking that most would assume, she's sure. The public face of the Complace is a beneficial, kindly one - one that looks out for the best of its subjects, and oh, it's a worthy goal. So worthy. She wants to make sure Feferi makes her every dream a reality. She will drub her and bend her, and make sure she goes in the path that her rational mind has set herself, and that is there is to it. It's her duty. It's. It's what makes her pusher flutter over pale over what is essentially a force of nature masquerading as a troll of flesh and blood. Feferi would feed herself to the Empire to make it bend the way she wants it to, sacrifice everything of herself and leave nothing back. Terezi aims to make sure she doesn't need to feed _everything_ to the merciless gears.

Pity tastes like blood in her teeth, salty-rich.

Her own step is jaunty as she promenades the corridors, and she can hear shrieking like a maelstrom as she passes empty doors, empty rooms. Honestly, it's like they forget the coronation duel, the way Feferi had forked her ancestress into submission and death. That purple-pink blood running every way imaginable. Holes. Gaping wounds. Who would have thought that Feferi would have won? Not anyone really, even if her little group of friends (rebels! terrible, death defying lawless _rebels_ ) had been standing behind her, making sure she stayed alive long enough to step onto the duelling grounds. Despite the laughsassins. Despite the simply _illegal_ power grabs of her predecessor. And now instead of condescension, they had kindness to deal with. 

They just didn't realise how cruel kindness could be; how it could crush you underneath. Mercy is a weight that's mistaken for weakness.

Justice is cleaner; a bare sword, unsheathed.

Her steps are crisp and she keeps her head high, walking to her moirail. After all, if she can't calm her, then nobody can. They're lost, they're doomed. There were rumours that the Condesce had used the Grand Highblood as her moirail; she knows that trolls look between the stretching memory of him and her much smaller sharp-teethed tangibility and wonder how she could possibly think she was ready to soothe the Empress. Look at her blood and his and _hers_ , and wonder how she could ever think herself worthy. Eridan would have been much more acceptable to the conservative factions; unfortunately, the flip of the coin was not on their side, and they got her, Terezi Pyrope, all the same and without asking their leave or permission to be there.

The towering clown had died in one of the battles between what had become the establishment, his church now insurgents as soon as Feferi climbed to her feet with a mask of fuchsia blood covering her face. As much as she'd like to say there was no place for the Mirthful Church of the Wicked Messiahs, they were still there. Still hanging on. Still preaching the end of the universe and everything in it. They were entrenched, but she hoped that they wouldn't be as essential as they obviously thought themselves. There were certain traditions, yes, _some very interesting points of law_ where they'd made themselves an integral part of process and judicial procedure, of the _Empire_ and its structure, but Terezi wondered how fine she could thread the legalities of the situation. The elders kept trying to bargain with Feferi for the right to continue things as they always were, so they could be what they had always been. Too old, too blind to realise that the winds sweeping the Empire would drive them to a wreck, if they didn't learn how to bend. 

When she pushes the doors of the throne room apart and strides through them, her moirail turns on her like a cornered eel, teeth and swiftness in the dark. But it's not as though she's not used to it, and an eel is no match for a dragon (but a horrorterror is). All she senses is a rush of skirts, her tongue registering a flash of salt-white and tyrian before she dodges sideways and turns on her heel as a frustrated shriek explodes across the internal parts of her aural clots, the trailing edges of her legislacerator tabard fluttering around her thighs. Every other highblood she's met in a rage has tasted like cinnamon and rust, something spicy over flat metal, a red and orange taste stirred through with the crispness of their chill blood. Feferi raging, shrieking, tastes like salt, cold and bitter.

Like white. Like the ocean. 

Like her lusus.

Maybe more trolls should remember that Feferi was the daughter of the Great Carbuncle, the Emissary to the Grand Court of Horrorterrors and _possibly_ they could come to an understanding of the awe they should hold her in. In the most original sense. As an overwhelming feeling of _fear_ produced by something so tremendously powerful, so worthy of reverence, that what it honestly inspired was dread. Terror. Shaking a troll down to the bones.

When Feferi comes back in for another swipe, Terezi trips her with her cane. Cane? Such a paltry word for such a magnificent instrument of the law! It contains both the ability to drub mercilessly and strike sense into bystanders, as well as being the final cutting word in any legal argument. Right now, she needs it for more of the former than the latter. 

Feferi lifts herself off the floor from where she's fallen and Terezi stands still, head bowed and listening to the hiss of breath over fang. The sound of imperial vestments rustling, holding her cane between her two hands in front of her, feet apart. One of the things that Feferi has shown her is how to wait; they teach each other new things all the time. Better things, softer things, ways to show that they could be weak and still welcome each other in. Feferi had held her while she cried about the end of the Scourge Sisters, and never held the shattered part of her pusher where Vriska lived against her. She'd helped her bind it up, so that even if it never healed (it won't), she can _live_ with it. Facing her now is the least she could do.

Now.

Her hand meets Feferi's cheek crisply, almost a slap. Barely a caress. But she knows what she needs to wake her moirail back to her self. Snap her out this rage, and it's a more forceful type of papping than most would employ. But the Empress needs a stricter hand. Suits Terezi very well. 

" _Shoosh_." 

Skipping backwards as deadly claws barely miss the skin of her midsection but leave gaping tears in the cloth over her gut, she hears Feferi scream and the sound is something that wants to tear her pusher to pieces. Obviously she's going to need to look over Feferi's appointment log and find out what happened to send her this far spiralling down into the madness of a highblood rage. It isn't like her to fly off the handle unless there's actually a good reason. There's another chance and she takes it, hand on cheek and feeling abyssal chill radiate from the gray skin she's touching. It's familiar, she wants to prick and prod, to agitate, but right now isn't the time for that.

" _Shoosh!_ " A pause, where she feels everything swing like a criminal ready to drop from a noose. A yawing, a moment that she can seize. Terezi follows up the initial contact with rubbing, getting both hands on her moirail's face and rubbing, soothing, and keeps up the steady shhhing, the shooshing, firm and no nonsense. Feferi responds best to firmness, as long as she keeps going, she'll tip the balance. And the balance of things is something that belongs to her, she knows just how to pick the path that leads her to the best solution. 

There's a moment where she's not sure if it's worked, if she's managed to trigger all those lovely little pacification pleasure points in her face before Feferi suddenly crumples against her. Terezi strokes her earfins, those lovely frilly pieces of sensory membrane that she'd been told felt so good to be touched gently, and presses diamond-bright kisses against her forehead. Holding the weight of her body up and letting Feferi lean on her, drape herself along the sharp points of a legislacerator's frame like it was the most comfortable pile of comfortnubs ever made.

A pile. They absolutely needed a pile.

And a long, long jam. 

"I've got you," she murmurs into a twitching earfin, and it's like a storm has broken, the sense of danger has entirely lifted. The moons rise to shine over another night, the waters settled and the Empress is not quite calm but she can get there. She's sane, at least. It's an improvement. There are tears soaking her uniform as Feferi unbends and cries, sags, not a force of nature any more. Just a troll. Like any troll. Weak in the arms of her moirail. "I've got you."

"I know, I know you do," Feferi sobbed against her shoulder, holding onto her to the point where Terezi knows she's going to have bruises. That's nothing, just a job hazard. One she's more than willing to accept for everything else Feferi gives her. "Terezi. Did I hurt you?"

"You'd need to be sharper than that to leave a scrape on the most proficient of legislacerators," the tealblood scoffed, and kissed her cheek, her forehead. Rubbed her fingers along her earfin until the Empress shivers like a wriggler and makes a soft, soft sound. "I've got you. Pale for you, Peixes."

The throne room is a wreck. The mosiacs are chipped, there's a trident through the wall, the throne is upended. All fixable. All workable. What matters is if the Empress can pick up her skirts and keep moving, pulling a kicking, screaming and protesting Empire to the new way of doing things. And Terezi intends to make sure she does.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed and it hit the notes you were after! This is a great ship.


End file.
